Asked to quantify “overwhelming,” Gabriel was guarded. “Let’s just say we’ll be printing more than 50 copies of the variants.”

§ The Cap/Tea Party thing made Keith Olbermann’s show (and many many other political blogs) but it is noted that while he quoted CBR’s Cup O’ Joe feature, he didn’t mention it by name. Bad Keith.
§ Warners has pushed back the release date of THE LOSERS from April 9 to June 4. That would seem to indicate that the studio thinks it’s a winner that can hold up in the summer box office race.

Canadian artist Kaare Andrews — in postproduction on the indie horror feature “Altitude,” which is likely to debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival — puts it best.

“You’ve seen the commercial guys go into directing, you’ve seen music videos guys go into directing; now you’re going to see comic writers and artists,” he predicts. “I think that the one thing we have the others don’t is the sense of storytelling.”

Also covered, Mike Mignola, Troy Nixey, and John Cassaday, among others.

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

“Let’s just say we’ll be printing more than 50 copies of the variants.”

And couching the words like that doesn’t mean they had 50 people take them up on that offer. Could be as few as 30 or 40 and they printed extras just in case. I will also concede that there might have been 70 or 80 takers.

But if 50 is the actual number, that’s 2% of 2500. 2% of retailers that didn’t order properly and will taking the time to mail in the stripped covers.

Not that I should’ve been spending my time doing this math this afternoon, but according to Marc-Oliver’s latest sales chart, the six titles in the Blackest Night ring promotion shipped a combined 392,195 copies. Now Marvel’s crowing about 2,500 of those that came back to them through stripped covers. Less than 2/3 of 1 percent. That’ll show DC for overshipping!